The intense discussion this summer about the newly published Harper Lee novel, Go Set a Watchman—and the remembrances of Lee’s widely admired, coming-of-age classic, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)—can be viewed, perhaps, as a validation of the humanities’ task: “To revisit things, to unsettle, to think about the things you thought you knew,” says John […]

Each summer, Boston’s North End is transformed by a combination of street festival and religious veneration as the city’s old Italian neighborhood pays tribute to the saints that immigrants prayed to in their hometowns. Over the next three days, Hanover Street will be filled with music, decorations, and the savory smell of Italian food as […]

Lindsey Walko remembers back in the sixth grade, when she saved the day while playing one of the orphans in a production of Annie. “During the preset, our stage manager forgot to put the laundry basket on,” Walko says, and she and the rest of the cast quickly noticed that the key prop was missing. […]

Education is the central mission of Boston University’s College of General Studies (CGS) and its professors, who don’t have teaching assistants and carry heavier course loads than most BU faculty. It is unprecedented and gratifying, says Natalie McKnight, dean of the college, that two CGS faculty members, Samuel Hammer and Meg Tyler, have received Fulbright Scholar […]

The first thing to know about Seth Blumenthal’s Marijuana in American History course is its apparent uniqueness; Blumenthal (GRS’13) says he’s trawled fruitlessly for evidence of a history-of-grass-class elsewhere, though it’s possible to find business offerings on the marijuana industry. The second thing to know: any notion that this is a fumes-shrouded pushover went up […]